Celine Dion, 'Loved Me Back to Life': Fall Music Preview 2013

Celine Dion would like you to know that "Loved Me Back to Life" will be her edgiest record to date—just not in the ways you might think. By way of example, she sings a few bars of the song "Water and a Flame," originally recorded by Daniel Merriweather and Adele, which finds her utilizing the lower, grainier register of her voice.

On the phone from her home in Las Vegas, Dion sings, "I need a drink to get me out/A couple more 'til I forget your name," using a deeper tone that's still distinctly hers, even as it suggests the smokier hues employed by Adele. "A few years ago, I would have pronounced it ‘a couple of more,' would have sung [stretches out the notes] 'til I forget your naaaame.' So for me, it's very, very different. I'm using my bedroom hair, bedroom voice."

More unexpected still is the lead single: The album's title track that was penned by Sia and produced by Sham and Mozart. Sung in a minor key, the song is a different kind of power ballad for Dion, backed by a chorus that features a beat drop that could almost be described as dubstep. There's also "Incredible," a duet with Ne-Yo so massive the Olympic Committee should start bookmarking it for the 2014 Winter Games.

"I've been gone for six years. There's a time where you think, ‘Do you think people will write songs for me?'" Dion says of the time since her last English-language album, 2007's Taking Chances. "I'm at the mercy of the songs because I don't write my material. But I could not believe what I was hearing. I'm not trying to reinvent myself. I don't want people to think, ‘This is a brand-new Celine,' but I am at a place in my career where I'm 45, I'm at the peak of my life, and I've felt like this before. I want to have a good time."